Careerbuider ties up with MSN India

Looks like the jobsite scene in India is going to get heated up. Or at least promises to. MSN which is the 11 top site in India (according to Alexa) and Careerbuilder India have partnered to provide Jobs on http://in.msn.com

There is only one pure-play jobsite in the top 20 websites - Number 15 - Naukri.com

When will Yahoo! India (no.2) wake up to the potential and market HotJobs in India aggressively? Maybe not soon, with all the global flux happening in their company.

Rediff (No.6) offers its own vertical search for Jobs on which surprisingly a search for the generic term "manager" throws up a page full of JobStreet.com results right now. How much traffic are the sites getting from Rediff is what we'd like to know, and how does the vertical search algorithm work, I wonder? Rediff apart from indexing the jobsites' entries is also throwing up results from Corporate Careers pages like gecareers.com - Is this being marketed by Rediff sales guys to organizations?

No Shows for Interviews

As part of the HR services we deliver for a client, we also recruit people (note: we are not headhunters, but rather act as internal HR depts of organizations)

One of the things I have noticed recently is that when one of my consultants is trying to set up interviews with the hiring manager, if 10 people say they are interested in an opening, finally only 2 turn up for the interview, and the rest have to be followed up individually, and are usually not responsive to emails or phone calls.

Let me assure you these are not highly in demand talent like software developers that we are chasing, but plain graduates in the sales function.

So I am left asking myself: "Self, why don't people turn up for interviews when they confirm first? Or at least call up and inform that they thought about it and are no longer interested"

When you don't turn up for an interview what you are essentially saying is "I am not professional and I don't care if you know it."

Why do that?

Best educated or the best

Sanjay thinks that companies are besotted with educational brands and that shows how they don't think of performance on the job:

I even remember sitting in a conversation when a promotion was being discussed and there were two candidates one a great performer with great potential but from a so-called tier 2 institute and another one from a tier 1 institute but not as a great a performer or potential and most people seemed to favour the person from tier 1 insti.

I had a really difficult time arguing with the client team that the education is supposed to convert to performance on the floor which should entitle people to promotions and not the tag of the education alone, it definitely was quite a difficult conversation. One of the very strong criteria they had for promotion was the qualification a person carried.

Recruiters, hiring managers, HR professionals all help in perpetuating this myth.

Why? What's the point of being from a 'premier institute' if it does not add value to the organization?

Update: A commentator blames HR people. However, I'd like to place the majority of the blame on the hiring managers. If they say non-MBAs are to be considered then the recruiter/HR person has to abide by that unless they have a better reason to only look for MBAs

But this is not just about MBAs and non-MBAs, distinction between 'premier' and 'non-premier' campuses is hogwash!

Roundup of some great HR blog posts

Laurie has a cool compilation of links talking about HR and other animals, oh, actually she's talking about Animals and Human Resources ;-)

Kris Dunn at HR Capitalist says we should pause and think a lot before announcing a telecommute program to fight rising gas prices. Involve the business in the decision. Let them own it. Don't do it for the sake of doing it.

Steve at All Things Workplace blogs that talents should be made stronger. Are you putting your talents to work and developing them?

Scott provides a slideshow to Charlene Li's book Groundswell focusing on Social Technographics Ladder. Guess I am a Creator, Critic, Collector, Joiner and Consumer all in one :-)

Michelle Malay Carter puts on her worklevel goggles to THE question in HR "How do we get a seat at the table?"

The Happy Employee has a roundup of the World without HR Contest. Hey, nobody told me about any contest :(

The HR Wench has something to say to third party recruiters. Heh, yeah we HR types totally get along with third party recruiters. Something like Marketing and Ad Agencies, if you don't know HR ;-)

Some interesting websites

There's a lot of action happening in the recruiting and work related sites section. Here's my take on some of the ones that have come to my attention:

• Talentty: I got to know of them when they added my blog to their blogroll. No request for coverage via a mail or something like that. Smart. However the blog does not have any updates after April 5th. Not so good. The main website itself has tried to segregate according to industry, and specialising in the Tech and ITES domains. There are also tabs for "Hot Jobs", "Walk-ins", "Onsite Jobs", "Startup" , "Freshers" and "Freelancers". The software section has the most jobs, however overall the number of jobs at Talentty is low. While they have added bells and whistles like RSS feeds category-wise, unless they are able to ramp up the variety and number of jobs I don't see Talentty making much of an impact on the jobsite scene.

• Orglex - This site showcases itself as a place for Industry and Organizational hubs. Putting a different spin on business networking when you join a hub. A hub is basically aggregated content from across the web on News, People, Blogs and Jobs that fall under that hub. Orglex seems to be positioning itself as a place for recruiters to find and get talent. While the attempt at aggregating all this content from across the web on one site can help it get membership, I think the lack of original content and exclusive jobs can affect the growth. The net is going local, and there are no geographical based hubs that one can join. So if I join management consulting and if there was a India hub too that I join then the technology should be able to filter that anyway, since news can be filtered by Google News. Interesting proposition, but work needs to be done on it.

• Workology - Has just come out of its invitation-only testing phase and apparently has 1000 members. It's primarily UK based and one sets up an account and tags oneself. The system then throws up work and projects for people who are interesting in contracting and consulting opportunities. In fact the site is geared for the new way of working - portfolio careers - and therefore shouldn't be your stop for a career related job. They have a blog too at http://www.workology.com/blog/

• Zyoin - It bills itself as the Next generation Career Portal, and it seems to be a referral jobsite too, a la Reffster. They also have PayScale's gadget to calculate salary to help jobseekers find the salary suitable for them I presume. Their blog http://zyoin.wordpress.com/ talks about online learning and assessment to be also in the pipeline. I still don't think that India is ready for referral jobsites. Somewhere there has to be an integration from these sites into organizational Applicant tracking systems and they should be geared to organization's internal referral programs. The other mistake these jobsites seem to be making is that they think that building a website is enough. They have to invest in a sales team and sell the concept to corporates since the bigger jobsites are well entrenched and leverage their existing relationships. And unless there is a proof of concept of online assessment to go along with it, corporates will not choose to try a new innovation.

The other thing I don't see is a concerted effort to leverage social networks that Indians seem to be joining in droves, like Orkut and Facebook and hi5. Building a site and trying to get an audience is a tough proposition for new sites.

Advorto's guide to Online Recruitment

Advorto, a UK based HR recruiting software company, has put together a free guide to online recruitment and they are making it available on registering some details if you visit http://www.advorto.com/guide.

Some of the areas the guide covers and are usually ignored by organizations are:

• Start with your career site - It's pathetic to see the bad quality of career sites that organizations employ. Marketing and Corporate Communications should be talking to IT and HR to make it a showcase to future employees.
• Consider other sites - Apart from the job sites, are there industry sites where your potential audience hangs out, virtually?
• Use your intranet, it’s free!
• Start a candidate e-newsletter - I gave this idea to a previous employer, got an award for it, but I don't think they have yet implemented it. And today I'd add to offer the newsletter by RSS feed too.
• Create an online referral system
• Consider using social networks
• Add a recruitment blog to your site

Most of these are not heavy on your recruitment budget, but usually HR and Recruiting heads in India are unaware of these new channels to boost the pipeline of candidates. This small pdf guide is sure to be a great resource for them! If you're interested in Recruitment in the new online world you can check their blog out too.

Subverting Monsterindia.com's usage policies

I got this very interesting email from someone recently:

Hi,

We have Monsterindia.com if u

Wanted to share my account at low cost (See below). And if u are interested pls contact us immediate.

Hours - Total( 1 year) - Installment

6pm - 9am(eve) - 24000/RS - 2000/RS (Month)
9am - 6pm - 48000/RS - 4000/RS (Month)
24 hours - 60000/RS - 5000/RS (Month)


Note: Give us ur full contact details..

Thanks,

So is this a new idea for recruiters or smaller organizations on how to make additional revenue? If so, then I am sure it violates some of Monsterindia.com's terms and conditions of usage. Guess it's this one:

Users are also prohibited from violating or attempting to violate the security of any Monster Site, including, without limitation the following activities: (a) accessing data not intended for such user or logging into a server or account which the user is not authorized to access;

Am not sure if this is a rampant scheme or some chap just came up with this idea and was unfortunate enough to mail me.

I guess the feedback for Monster is that their services are probably overpriced for some of their clients and they should have some other schemes particularly for small and medium enterprises.

I wonder if these practices are also happening to the other jobsites like Naukri and Timesjobs?

Can't the webmasters scan for different IP addresses using the same employer id? Those would be very suspicious cases for such usage.

MonsterIndia adds video resumes

Just noticed that MonsterIndia has the feature for jobseekers to add and upload their video resumes.

I wonder how many people are actually using this facility. The interesting thing is who would choose to use it. For people in sales and front office roles a video resume would be very helpful. It can help an employer to make a selection decision or otherwise.

The other point is would recruiters go through a full video resume or will they hit the stop button after a couple of seconds. In which case, how different would a video resume be from a photograph.

Oh yes, if you are not comfortable in front of a camera and are not too confident about your spoken and personal presentation skills, do NOT go for a video resume!

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CEO and Co-founder of Reffster leaves

The Jobster.com idea took 2 years to unravel in the US, however seems like the referral jobsite idea in India is just too premature to take off. Ranjit Jatar who was CEO of Reffster.com has left the startup (covered on this blog earlier) and is currently being managed by the other two co-founders Arjun and Arun Yadav.

Ranjit blogs about his experiences here. Some interesting comments also.

If a new portal aims to replicate Naukri, Monster or Times–all very successful ‘vanilla’ platform models– that would not work since the space is already clutterred. If it aims to go beyond ‘vanilla’ and also value add that recruiting vendors do, then that will limit scalability with clients. Therefore a  100% Tech enabled value add led by new-age technology that matches Profiles with job descriptions to get ‘the right fit’, could be an idea that is innovative — and if another idea on the Sources of Revenue (from candidates rather than companies) is implemented, perhaps disruptive as well to the way existing portals operate.

Well, I disagree with Ranjit. Technology that attempts to match resumes with job descriptions will be open to manipulation by smart jobseekers and end up wasting a lot more time of the clients. I would be a lot more interested if jobsites can leverage the existing social networks where Indians hang out. Making apps that make sharing and applying to jobs and ride on the platforms that Orkut and Facebook provide. Wonder why nobody  has thought of that?

Jatar has some thoughts on management structures for startups also

In addition , I would urge all budding entrepreneurs who plan to partner to also spend quality time–as they would do building up their business plans — to carve out strategic and operational Roles at the outset. I would strongly advise co-founders to work out a Founders agreement during the incubation phase where future situations and how they would be tackled are thought through. Perhaps –and it would be interesting to get reader comments – it may not be a bad idea to also have a “First among equals” leadership Role assigned to one of the co founders at the outset for operational and strategic business decisions that will need to be taken after the launch( eg a casting vote in Board meetings) , though there would obviously be guardrails in place to ensure that consensus is enshrined for key strategic decisions e.g. exits, new partners, changes to Founders agreement etc.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Penelope and Joel talk jobs and other stuff

OK, this is an amazing video interview that Joel Cheesman (the Cheezhead) took of Penelope Trunk a.k.a the Brazen Careerist.

It's amazing because two of my fave bloggers are talking.

Hear Penelope talk about how men and women can get away by saying controversial things in different contexts, how organizations should blog and how millenials (or Gen Y) don't really need job boards. Penelope also says how job boards should move with the times.

Listen. Laugh. Learn.

Am still not sure if Joel was actually wearing pants. He writes he was, but we don't have video proof ;-)

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Interview with RiseSmart CEO Sanjay Sathe

When Sanjay sent me a mail I asked him if he would like to be interviewed for the readers of this blog he readily agreed. So I emailed him some questions and he readily mailed me back the answers on RiseSmart and its unique business model of providing personal support for CXOs who are job-hunting. The interesting part is that there is an India component in RiseSmart too. Read on to know the details.

1. Tell us about yourself, what have you done and how did you become CEO of RiseSmart?

I'm like many RiseSmart customers in that I've spent my career climbing the corporate ladder, in jobs in both the U.S. and abroad. In 2006, I was vice president for enterprise data management for Sabre Holdings in Dallas when I was "transitioned." During my subsequent job search, I became very frustrated with the options for searching for senior-level jobs online. This is what inspired me to start RiseSmart.

2. RiseSmart has a very 'different' business approach. How did you come up with the idea?

During my job search, I was spending probably 30 or 40 hours per month signing up on job boards, recruiter sites and corporate sites. When I used one of the aggregator sites, I would receive literally thousands of results for a search term like "vice president of marketing" -- and most of these results were really poor matches. This whole exercise was too time consuming and inefficient - “going across a multitude of website and a multitude of pages within a site looking for that needle in the haystack”.

The irony was, here I am, a senior executive used to having a staff working for me, and yet when it came to finding my next job, I had to do all this grunt work myself. Why wasn't there a service that could sort through these job results for me? Why wasn't there a service that treated executives like executives? That's why I created RiseSmart -- to provide $100K+ earners with the level of job-search support they've earned the right to expect.

3. Am quite interested to know about what are profiles of people who will be assisting the CXO levels with their job search. What kind of people are you hiring for those positions?

The RiseSmart Concierge center is based in New Delhi. All RiseSmart Concierges have two to three years of HR experience working for US based RPO companies, thus understanding the subtle nuances e.g. the difference between the managing director in India and in the US. Additionally, we put all concierges through an extensive training program, and we monitor their performance on an ongoing basis to ensure that our customers are receiving the right kinds of jobs.

4. What is the ratio of 'job concierges' vis a vis job seekers?

Each RiseSmart Concierge is assigned up to 25 customer accounts. RiseSmart's proprietary search technology first does the heavy lifting to present a filtered number of job results before the concierge enters the process. The technology narrows it down from a ocean to a bucket and the concierge from a bucket to a cup to make it really relevant to the customer. The first time around the Job Concierge spends a little more time in servicing the customer, and then the incremental results are less time consuming. Also we have split the concierges by Functional areas so they really can get specialized and get a good understanding of the nuances of that particular function.

5. Who do you think are your main competitors?

No one does what we do, which is why we're so excited about our future. TheLadders has carved out a niche as a job board for $100K+ earners, but it offers members only a limited pool of jobs which are posted on their site by recruiters. Their database of jobs is less than a tenth the size of ours. And the monthly subscription fee they charge is comparable to ours. So why would anyone choose them over us? I think our value proposition is pretty compelling. Just that we are new so people do not know about us.

6. How many employees does RiseSmart have?

Currently 30 across New Delhi and Dallas.

7. Are you focused on the US or do you have plans for other countries too?

We are focused on the U.S. market initially, with plans to expand internationally once our business model is firmly established. Much of my experience is in global marketing, and I see many opportunities for RiseSmart service in other labor markets, including India's. So stay tuned.

The 25 most wanted US professions

Jobfox did a survey and found that Software Design/Development, Nursing, Accounting/Finance Executive, Sales/Business Development Representative and Administrative Assistant are the top five most active professions in the March 2008 Jobfox Top 25 Most Wanted U.S. Professions rankings. The report reflects the professions most often targeted by employers and recruiters using Jobfox to search for and find new or replacement workers during a 120-day period ending February 21, 2008.

Professions rounding out the top 10 are: Corporate Finance; Networking/System Administration; Intelligence; General Accounting; and Technical Customer Support. The complete list of rankings is available at www.jobfox.com/Site/PressRoom.aspx

The March 2008 Jobfox Top 25 Most Wanted U.S. Professions rankings were derived from a stratified random sample of more than 4,000 U.S. job openings from the Jobfox database during a 120-day period ending February 21, 2008. In total, Jobfox identified more than 150 distinct professions for which employers were seeking candidates during the period. Also captured in the rankings are the median salary ranges desired by candidates for top-ranked professions. A stratified random sample of more than 100,000 Jobfox candidate profiles, matched to specific professions, was used to determine median salaries for each profession.

hat-tip: Barry Lawrence of Jobfox's email to me.

RiseSmart gets angel funding

RiseSmart, yes the same folks behind the Career 100 rankings have just announced that they have got angel funding. In an email they sent to me they said:

RiseSmart, the human-powered job search service for $100K+ earners, announced today that it has secured a $1.5 million seed round of financing from angel investors, including leading authorities in the human resources and recruitment industry.

Bridging the gap between traditional job boards and the personal
attention of a career coach, RiseSmart - a subscription-based service
competing with executive job sites such as TheLadders.com - assigns
each member a personal "Job Concierge" who is responsible for matching
member profiles with the most relevant job listings returned through
an intelligent automated search of its million-job database.

The RiseSmart Concierge is the centerpiece of RiseSmart's strategy
of building deeper customer relationships than other $100K+ job sites.
Each RiseSmart Concierge is responsible for reviewing the resumes and
learning the job preferences of assigned members. Concierges can
modify future searches based on member feedback - for example,
screening out jobs from undesirable companies.

So would there be takers for RiseSmart's services? I think so. Senior executives, in my personal experiences, are really not very technology savvy and while jobs have moved to the jobsites, CXO level folks are chary about doing a job hunt through job sites. One CEO I was talking to was so concerned about his privacy that he hadn't even opened a Linkedin profile.

So in my view RiseSmart is competition not just for specialised jobsites like ladders.com but in this part of the world it can be a viable competition for executive search consultants, depending on the value their "Job Concierges" can add to their clients!

100 Talent specific sites

Amy Quinn sent me an email about an article "Where the Talent Is: 100 Sites to Find the Elite in Any-Given-Field" that they have painstakingly set-up to focus on niche jobsites for different kinds of talented people from design folks to lawyers to management to healthcare etc.

The list is US centric of course, but I see a lot of scope for a list of the same type focussing on the other English speaking parts of the world.

For HR jobs they list only one site :-)

Workforce HR Jobs: Sometimes HR personnel need to be hired as well. Help yourself find the best employee for the job with information you can find on this site.

And for management sites there are quite a few:

The Ladders: Looking for new executives or higher level employees can be difficult. You can find employees and place listings on this site which specializes six figure jobs and up.

Executives on the Web: Find your next corner office resident through this site. Check through thousands of high level resumes to find the best person for your job.

6 Figure Jobs: Make sure you're paying out the big bucks to the right person. This site will help you find qualified candidates for your high level positions.

ExecuNet: Find CEOs, vice presidents and other high level management through this site. Post your job and get responses from interested candidates.

hundredK: Whether you're looking for a new director of sales, a vice president or even a CEO, you'll find qualified applicants on this site to help you get the best for your business.

Manager Crossing: Make sure your management is top notch by drawing from candidates on this site. Posting jobs is free so there is no loss if you don't find exactly what you're looking for.

So if you are looking for US based candidates in a specific field of specialization you should check out the 100 sites listed there.

Yahoo Layoff and the Twittering Employee

Ryan Kuder was recently laid off from Yahoo like lots of others across the world (even in India). However, what makes his case different is that as his day progressed he was twittering and his personal experiences were shared by lots of people across the world.

Today he has a blog post up sharing the experiences and the implications such kinds of social media has on people's realities. All the best Ryan, may you find your next dream job soon!

Somehow, someone with a blog that had more than a hand full of readers found my tweets. Henry Blodget excerpted my day on Silicon Alley Insider. That story hit the top of Techmeme by Tuesday night. Yesterday, my layoff was on the front page of the LA Times print edition and it was reprinted in today's Merc. I started Tuesday with 87 followers on Twitter. By Wedensday night, I had over 400. We're just a few shy of 500 now. Hopefully one of you is hiring ;)

I certainly didn't expect all of this when I got laid off. But the way I see it, the more people who know I'm out there looking, the more likely I am to get a job. And so far, the response from friends, colleagues, and total strangers has been amazing. Thanks for the emails, the tweets, the LinkedIn invites, and the Facebook messages.

The most interesting thing about all of this to me as someone involved in social media has been the way that news or content travels virally across the web. Someone found something interesting that they thought worth sharing, and then so did the next guy. I think it's an interesting case study, especially for me as a marketer, to watch things spread like this.

I think it's also a great way to look at how a job search can happen today. It used to be emails and phone calls to everyone you knew. With Twitter, there's been a bit of a different spin. I can keep anyone who is interested in the loop on how my hunt is going. And I've got a network of nearly 500 people out there who can feed me leads. And it's been working so far. I've got a meeting with an entrepreneur at lunch today and am having lunch with a Twitter friend on Friday. The response from recruiters and hiring managers has been great too.

What are you doing to embrace this sometimes scary mostly exciting new media?

Lucy Kellaway tears into headhunters

Lucy Kellaway, the bête noire of buzzword users, trains her acerbic pen at the headhunting profession:

Modern headhunters spout as much guff as management consultants, but without the excuse. Consultants have to, to hide the fact that it often isn’t clear what they’re selling. Headhunters are selling something pukka so there’s no reason why they can’t come right out and say so.

Korn Ferry describes itself as “The premier provider of human capital solutions” and the other big firms are no better. Heidrick & Struggles boasts that “as innovators we are actively redefining top-level search to encompass complementary services”. Michael Page’s approach goes for bathos: “Our journey starts when we see a difference between where we are today and where we want to be,” it says on its website.

Last week an acquaintance told me he had just employed one of the world’s largest headhunting firms to help him find a new managing director. He received an introductory e-mail from the firm that began: “As a Leading Total Talent Solution Provider we have some special assessment tools to help identify the ‘right’ candidate.”

The only important word here – right – has acquired inverted commas, while the rest seems to have been produced by an automatic buzzword generator. All the above words are dismal, but the word “talent” is the worst. Most people aren’t terribly talented at all. And once you start talking of talent, it’s only a hop, skip and jump to “talent pools”, with the dangerously misleading idea that schools of talent are swimming around, just ready to be fished out by the headhunter.

With the e-mail came attached a “Leadership Advantage Toolkit” containing 66 characteristics that might be desirable in a leader, including “dealing with paradox” and “organisational agility”. These had to be rated according to “mission critical”, “important” and so on.

This is a low trick. It is about making clients think they are buying rigour in the hope this will make them less likely to protest when presented with the inevitably disappointing shortlist of candidates.

In fact headhunting is both simple and difficult. The theory is simple: there are good managers and not-so-good ones. Alas, most are fairly mediocre, as managing isn’t easy. Choosing the good ones has nothing at all to do with 66 carefully weighted competencies: it is more a matter of finding three. The ability to think, the ability to act, and (most important) the ability to get others to act.

The Most Influential headhunters in the world

BusinessWeek has a list of the 50 most influential ones. To profile:

You can't get to the top without the headhunters. That's as true for businesses as it is for established and emerging leaders. The world's top headhunters control access to the lion's share of C-suite succession and leader-replacement searches for the world's largest corporations. Their influence also extends to the top ranks of the most ambitious smaller companies, which understand how crucial top talent is and are willing to pay for it.

Who are the most powerful talent brokers? They include former management consultants, corporate human resources executives, authors, boardroom advisers, graduates of the world's most elite business schools, entrepreneurs, philanthropists, and trusted confidants of the world's most powerful business leaders. They are almost universally workaholics and globetrotters with a passion for the business of executive matchmaking, an affinity for socializing and peering deep into the human psyche, and a finely honed instinct for fitting candidate and company.

Thirty-one of the first 50 headhunters profiled herein hail from North America, the world's largest market, for their refined talent-spotting abilities. Many of them recruit for industries—such as financial services, consumer goods and services, technology, retail, and manufacturing—that have long relied on external talent to drive performance and fulfill senior leadership functions including the most prized C-suite posts.

And given its recent recruitment of two especially influential headhunters from competing firms, NYSE-listed Korn/Ferry International (KFY) takes the lead with seven headhunters on this initial list of executive recruitment power brokers.

Oh, and there's one Indian on the list too. Dinesh Mirchandani, Regional director, Boyden World

Recruit superstar women rather than men

According to this research (hat tip Bob Sutton) by Harvard Business School Professor Boris Gryosberg:

talented women who switch firms maintain their stardom, and their new employer’s share price holds steady. Groysberg provides two explanations for this discrepancy:

• Unlike men, high-performing women build their success on portable, external relationships —with clients and other outside contacts.

• Women considering job changes weigh more factors then men do, especially cultural fit, values, and managerial style.

These strategies enable women to transition more successfully to new companies. And that has crucial implications for all professionals. By understanding successful women’s career strategies, women and men can strengthen their ability to shine in any setting."

So, organizations can help people become successful by letting them build networks externally? Huge career implications for men from this research, also the need to focus away from only compensation to assessing the fit of the organizational culture with their personality and work styles.

I need to study the research in detail.

Search firms and Trust

Krista Bradford has an interesting take on why the level of trust in a client and executive search firm is so low:

As a former investigative journalist, I know all about confidentiality. In fact, unlike search partners, I had to be willing to go to prison to protect a source. If there are some details that a candidate would rather not share, it is easy enough to redact from data exports and update reports to the client. That is why I suspect that the primary reason search firms refuse to share the data they gather over the course of a search is pure self-interest. They simply don't want to help their clients build their own database. Another reason is that some firms may be afraid to "show their work" quite simply because they haven't done it.

Interesting take. I wonder what recruiters and executive search consultants would reply to that?

In my opinion, there are certain things that are taken to be the 'norms of operating' in an industry. I wonder how the growth of jobsites and increase in transparency is changing the way executive search firms conduct their business? Is trust increasing or decreasing?

Will NotchUp catch up?

That's the question I asked myself when Joel invited me for the beta. And then I read his blog post about it.

The site is currently in beta and invite-only. I joined recently. Your LinkedIn profile conveniently serves as your resume, or your can do it the old-fashioned way. The technology is pretty impressive for a beta. You pick a price for being interviewed and payments are made via PayPal.

On the employer side, there is no fee to join and “when you find an individual you’re interested in, make them an offer to interview. If they accept, they’ll share their contact details with you so you can finalize the details of your interview. You don’t pay anything until the interview takes place.” The site also offers a 100 percent refund for interviews-gone-bad, as well as stats and feedback on candidates from their previous interviews.

Techcrunch calls this a “really good idea.” Longtimers may be a bit more skeptical. Industry pro Susan Burns says, “which employers are going to be lining up to pay for interviews?”

Well that was the question I asked myself too. Has resume spam become so bad that companies will want a totally passive candidate base and then pay them to get interviewed?

Will NotchUp work? Well, that would depend on how you have priced your time for the interviewer.

But I still think a better model to fight resume spam is the ladders.com's counter-intuitive one. Check here for what Heather says about them